Update On Terry Gilliam’s The Wholly Family

This morning I reported the following facts-and-a-falsehood about Terry Gilliam’s next film, The Wholly Family:

Filming will take place in Naples between January 10th and 16th

It’s based upon Eve Merriam’s poem The Wholly Family

We can expect it to run around fifteen minutes

Gilliam is currently casting American actors as the lead father, mother and young son characters, as well as a series of Italian supporting players with mime, ballet and circus skills

Well, we can cross off that bit about Eve Merriam because I’ve now learned Gilliam doesn’t know the Merriam poem at all. The film will be based upon an original script by Gilliam himself, something that he says he wrote as “an exercise”.

Italian pasta company Garofalo have been sponsoring annual films about Naples, of which this is to be the next. Gilliam will be reuniting with Nicola Pecorini and Gabriella Pescucci, his regular cinematographer and costumier of late, and the two high profile Italians to recur in his crew. If there was any doubt before, now it’s gone – this is going to be a very beautiful film.

Thanks to Phil Stubbs of the Gilliam fan site Dreams and Theresa Shell of the Man Who Killed Don Quixote support site for following up on the earlier info with Mr. Gilliam and then passing on his comments.

Incidentally, Garofalo pasta have a YouTube page but all that’s on it at the moment is a trailer for the last short film, Valeria Golino’s Armandino e il Madre. I’ll have to look harder, I guess, to find The Wholly Family when it’s done.